By Brandon Banks
In an increasingly complex world of commerce, having a cohesive payment strategy can be the difference between success and failure. But creating a sustainable strategy isn’t just about finding the right payment methods; it’s also maintaining control over your entire payment ecosystem.
In the realm of payment processing, control isn’t about power, but flexibility and adaptability. It’s about ensuring you have the autonomy to make strategic changes, evolve with new markets, and outgrow existing solutions when necessary. It’s about having control over your payment processing relationships, gateway partnerships, processing data, contracts, and tokenized data.
Understanding the Importance of Control
Control in your payment strategy means having the ability to steer the course of your business without being restricted by limitations imposed by third-party payment processors or gateways. This control extends across several crucial areas, including the following:
- Payment Processing Relationships — As your business grows and evolves, you need the freedom to choose payment processors that cater to your evolving needs. Whether it’s about expanding into new markets, offering new payment methods, or ensuring better transaction success rates, having control means you can strategically select your payment processors.
- Gateway Relationships — Similar to payment processors, your gateway relationships should also be within your control. This means being able to switch payment gateways when needed, without facing any technical challenges or contractual limitations
- Processing Data — You should have easy access to your transaction data. This data is invaluable for insights into customer behaviors, transaction success rates, and potential areas of improvement.
- Contracts — Avoid long-term, restrictive contracts with payment processors and gateways. Flexibility in contracts allows you to switch providers when it’s beneficial for your business.
- Tokenized Data — Tokenization replaces sensitive cardholder data with unique symbols or ‘tokens,’ enhancing the security of transactions. However, this data often gets locked with your payment gateway, making it hard to switch providers without a costly and time-consuming migration process.
Tokenization and Control
Tokenization plays a critical role in enhancing payment security. However, the challenge lies in the fact that tokens are typically held at the gateway level. Gateways have proprietary token vaults and often charge exorbitant fees for exportation.
For a merchant with a large portfolio of tokens for recurring payments or stored payments for digital wallets, migrating tokens to another gateway or payment service provider can be difficult, costly, and time-consuming.
So how do you maintain control over your tokenized data? The solution is to house your tokens externally from the gateway. This approach allows you to easily route transactions to a new gateway or processor using the same tokens, without needing a migration. Hence, you maintain control over your tokenized data and can make changes to your payment strategy whenever necessary.
Regaining Control with Payment Orchestration
One of the most effective ways to ensure control in your payment strategy is by leveraging a payment orchestration platform. These platforms act as a single interface between your business and multiple payment processors and gateways. They ensure you have the flexibility to switch providers, expand into new markets, and introduce new payment methods without any technical or contractual hurdles.
More importantly, some advanced payment orchestration platforms provide an external token vault, giving you complete control over your tokenized data.
Final Thoughts
A payment strategy is not a one-time setup but an ongoing process. It’s something that should be continuously monitored, optimized, and controlled. Therefore, it’s not just about setting up your payment infrastructure but also about how you manage and control it over time.
Maintaining control over your payment strategy is not about having power but about ensuring flexibility and adaptability. It’s about being able to steer your business in the direction you want, without being restricted by your payment infrastructure. As you continue to develop a future-conscious payment strategy, remember to consider control as a vital component. Whether it’s about choosing your payment processors, accessing your transaction data, or managing your tokenized data, ensure you’re in the driver’s seat.
The payment ecosystem is vast and complex, but understanding the intricacies can significantly improve your business operations. It’s not just about having the right relationships or the right technologies in place, but having the right level of control over all these aspects.
If you’re looking to take the plunge and find an optimal payment infrastructure solution that allows you to stay in control, contact Nexio today. With Nexio’s comprehensive suite of services at your disposal, you’ll be able to ensure secure transactions without sacrificing flexibility or speed. Equip yourself with the right tools now and set yourself up for an agile future you can be proud of.